What You Do After Your Speaking or Performing Event Counts

I received a question from a member of our newsletter community that I would like to respond to in this section:

In your newsletter you asked if there are any topics that anyone would like covered. There is something that I would like to see covered. I have given well over a hundred presentations in my life and despite being extremely anxious and fearful at times I have rarely if ever backed away from doing the presentation. I always believed that the more that you just did it, despite the hardship, it would become easier and I have to say that it has and my fear of public speaking is manageable most of the time. However one topic that I have never seen addressed, at least extensively, is dealing with post public speaking terror. Often after giving a presentation I spend days and restless nights stewing about everything that I perceived went wrong. Just a few examples, how I made a fool of myself because I stumbled through parts of the presentation, how I offended someone in the room because I forgot their name, how my presentation was good but could have been so much better if I hadn't forgotten about a key point or how my presentation must have been poor because only a few people acknowledged that I did a good job. Even if everyone in the room said that I gave an incredible presentation it only helped a little bit and I never really felt a complete sigh of relief after the presentation was over. These thoughts and many more have caused me a lot of stress in my life. And it is most likely that the same principles that alleviate the fear before speaking also can help alleviate the nightmare after speaking. I just wondered if you had any thoughts on this topic or am I the only one that has struggled with this. Thanks!

First, I would like to thank you for your question and assure you that you are not the only one struggling with negative self-talk and harsh self-criticism after a presentation or performance. The degree to which people engage in self-criticism after a speaking or performing event varies. Most people that I have worked with in workshops and coaching sessions have engaged in a fair degree of negative inner dialogue and are actively working to change their tendencies toward self-criticism after a speaking or performing event.

I have written before about the fact that many of us are very hard on ourselves - we drive ourselves hard and set some pretty high standards for ourselves. We tend to have the voice of the "inner critic" or what Thom Rutledge refers to as "The Bully" (if interested in reading more about this visit www.performanceanxiety.com/books_tapes.htm to locate Thom's book, Embracing Fear and Finding the Courage to Live Your Life). 

Some of us have experienced this type of harsh criticism and negative judgment growing up, and we have internalized a harsh and unforgiving voice within ourselves. Sometimes it seemed that no matter how hard we tried or how well we did, it was never quite good enough for those we wanted to please (and we may have unknowingly internalized this same attitude toward ourselves). 

Others of us may not have received negative feedback or disapproval from others but we, too, have internalized a harsh way of responding to ourselves when we are not meeting up to our own ideal standards of perfection. We often hold an image of how we think we should be and we strive to meet up to this image, leaving us feeling deficient and diminished if we are not living up to this concept of our ideal selves. We tend to focus on where we see ourselves lacking and are often frustrated and disappointed with ourselves when we are not "measuring up" to where we think we should be.

It is essential that we break the pattern of engaging in harsh self-judgment and learn to respond to ourselves in a supportive and affirming way after a speaking or performing event. The way we treat ourselves after an event strongly influences our feelings about speaking or performing and sets the stage for how we feel going into the next event. 

Imagine if you were trying to build confidence and positive self-regard in a child. Would you ever consider speaking to this child in such a harsh and critical way after he or she came away from a speaking or performing event, focusing on all that you perceived as wrong or lacking? Imagine the demoralizing effects this would have on a child, leaving the child with a feeling of failure and self-doubt. And imagine how this child would feel facing the next challenge up ahead. 

Whether you are dealing with a child, or yourself as an adult, we all need to be validated and affirmed and have an encouraging, supportive voice to count on, especially after we face a difficult challenge and anticipate other challenges up ahead.

Many times we can fall into some bad habits and do things on auto-pilot without giving them much thought. We may have learned this negative, self-critical voice early on but then carried it forward with little to no conscious thought about the consequences of continuing this type of inner dialogue. Even when we are aware of the consequences, bad habits can be hard to break, so we need to have persistence and patience in changing our ways.

The first step in any change process is awareness of something that you want to be different and a willingness and desire to change. Then, it takes consciousness to unlearn patterns of behavior that do not serve us and learn some healthier patterns of behavior that support us. 

So, to change the negative self-talk and self-criticism after speaking or performing, it is best to stay on the look-out for this tendency as you go into an event and decide ahead of time how you want to handle the post-speaking or performing time. You might set some guidelines for yourself, such as after the event, you will think about (or write down) at least 3-5 positive things about what you just did before any critical thoughts are allowed to be considered. 

After focusing on the positive, if you have some critical thoughts, it is helpful to establish a guideline with yourself that you have to engage in constructive criticism which has a purpose for self-improvement going forward and not idle criticism that only serves the purpose of making you feel bad. 

To be constructive, the criticism has to be specific and have a positive suggestion for behavioral change rather than be global, unproductive faultfinding. If in doubt, consider if you would want to express this type of criticism to your child or best friend. If not, then revise it until you come up with something you would say to those you love.

You may also want to have an upper limit of 1-2 constructive criticisms per event and have a rule that for every criticism, you have to come up with two positive, affirming thoughts for yourself. Whatever guidelines you create for yourself, you will have to give yourself a strong limit to help stop the tendency to dwell on the negatives.

Another helpful technique to limit dwelling on negatives is to give yourself 3-5 minutes to focus on the negatives (using a timer for this) 1-2 times per day. During this time you can give yourself permission to express your negative thoughts, either to yourself or out loud. Once the timer goes off, then it is time to move on and think about other things. If your negative thoughts arise again, then you have delay focusing on the negatives until the next time period you designate. This practice trains your mind to contain negativity rather than allowing it to be free-floating or obsessive. (This same technique can also be applied to pre-speaking or performing worry, where you designate specific "Worry Time" to help contain the worry.)

While we all may have different degrees of this harsh self-judgment and self-critical behavior post- speaking or performing, it is essential that we say NO MORE to this inner "Bully" and actively work to stop this harassing behavior. We need to call forth a supportive "Ally" voice within us who can speak to us in a validating and affirming way, highlighting our strengths and successes and giving us constructive criticism in a helpful manner when called for. 

We need to give up striving to live up to some perfectionistic ideal we have created and learn to live with more reasonable and realistic expectations of ourselves as human beings who have both strengths and areas of challenge. We also have to remember "It is not about me!" and not use our precious time and energy concerning ourselves about what others may think of us. People have a lot on their minds and chances are they are not giving much, if any, thought to what happened when you spoke or performed.

So, the message for all of us is to create and nurture a kind, supportive, affirming inner voice and focus on the positives as much as possible. When you do consider critical thoughts, make sure they are constructive and guide you toward improvement going forward without any self-condemnation in the process. And, try to limit the time you give to all of this self-assessment, as we tend to focus way too much time thinking about ourselves anyway.